feminism

Even as feminism experiences a resurgence, there’s still a marked lack of representation of women of color and gender nonconforming individuals in both art and political activism. This disparity was recently debated on an international level with the criticism launched at the disproportionately white and cisgender Women’s March. A current show HACKING/MODDING/REMIXING As Feminist Protest at Pittsburgh’s Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon provides a direct rebuke of this continued inequality by emphasizing the power of intersectional feminism (feminism that embraces multiple, overlapping social identities beyond gender, including race, ethnicity, sexuality and class).

The exhibition leads by example by bringing together a group of twenty two artists who fracture and rearrange technology to create their own narratives within male-dominated fields like gaming, net developing and computing. Organized by artist and game developer Angela Washko, the show, in many ways, is an answer to the much-reported lack of women in tech industries (Washko cites a 2013 study in her introductory wall text, stating only 26% of the positions in computing jobs in the U.S. are held by women). But, with its smart and diverse curation, HACKING/MODDING/REMIXING As Feminist Protest goes further than exhibitions about feminism often go, taking on race and other identity issues. This makes the show not only politically relevant, but also necessary viewing during our current feminist revival.

One of the few positive side effects of Trump’s chaotic pussy-grabbing rise to power is the revitalization of feminism as an active political tool. Between the Women’s March and women-driven exhibitions like Nasty Women, women are now at the forefront of the resistance to Trump’s dangerous administration. The strength of this feminist revival explains why the failure of A.I.R. Gallery’s 12th biennial exhibition Sinister Feminism is such a disappointment.

Rather than a strong rebuke of a misogynist administration, Sinister Feminism, curated by Piper Marshall with Lola Kramer, shows a stubborn refusal to scrap wonky aesthetic concerns in a time of political emergency. Not only is the exhibition’s attempt to rethink feminist art’s essentialism hackneyed, it also felt disassociated from reality.

Saturday’s Women’s March, not even counting the thousands of protests on inauguration day itself, was by many accounts the largest demonstration in the history of the United States. In the US alone, a conservative estimate puts the number of protesters around 3 million. Hell yeah! The largest marches were concentrated in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles, but dozens of other cities around the country saw massive crowds. (Just look at Chicago, above.)

Of course, the day was recorded for posterity in GIF form. None of these are particularly memorable GIFs, but it’s been one hell of a herstoric weekend.

Just when you thought the Trump administration couldn’t bring any more reality TV drama: Duff Goldman, of Food Network’s Ace of Cakes fame, claims Trump’s inauguration cake was a plagiarism of the cake he sculpted for President Obama in 2009. [Facebook]

Groups including Canadian, British, and French citizens were denied entry to the United States, fingerprinted, searched, and photographed by border agents after disclosing their intentions to attend the Women’s March on Washington. GO FREEDOM! [The Independent]

Oh man, I wish I could’ve gone to Marilyn Minter and Madonna’s talk at the Brooklyn Museum. The two discussed feminism, aging as a woman artist, and Trump, among other topics. [artnet News]

Graffiti writer KATSU has demonstrated his newest model tagging-drone with the phrase “SCUM TRUMP”. The technology still seems pretty far-off from making things that look nice, but it could offer politically-minded street artists access to hard-to-reach places like billboards. [New Atlas]

In other anti-Trump art news, Jaden Smith and Shia LaBeouf have installed a camera on the side of the Museum of the Moving Image to livestream participants repeating “He will not divide us” for the duration of Trump’s presidency. [Billboard]

With the future of the NEA in doubt, the editors of ARTnews have compiled a list of key battles from the Culture Wars that gutted American art funding. Seriously, sometimes it is so embarrassing to have to explain to people from other countries why Americans can’t have nice things. [ARTnews]

Despite the misogynistic horror of Donald Trump’s campaign and eventual election victory, 2016 was a great year for women in the art. There were compelling solo exhibitions by women artists in major institutions, a copious list of all-women group shows and dynamic revivals of unfairly overlooked female artists’ careers. It seems like 2016 marked the return of much-needed 1990’s-style “girl power.”

Granted, there’s still a long way to go for equal representation, particularly for women artists of color. But, hopefully, this is just the beginning. To celebrate this year’s exciting and timely return to feminism, I selected the ten best shows featuring women in 2016. Results below:

A week after the election, women’s bodies are a battleground yet again. Donald Trump hinted at overturning Roe v. Wade on 60 Minutes and Paul Ryan thought birth control was a “nitty-gritty detail” of the dismantlement of the Affordable Care Act. This isn’t even taking into consideration the pussy-grabbing rhetoric of the campaign. With President-elect Trump and a Republican majority in Congress, women–like many diverse populations–feel newly under siege.

This danger to women’s health and civil liberties inadvertently breathes new life into art that engages with the female body and its subjugation. While using the body, in the recent past, may have felt like Feminism 101, art now needs to reflect and reject this patriarchal threat. Feminist art stalwart Carolee Schneemann achieves just that in her dual exhibitions Further Evidence–Exhibit A at PPOW Gallery and Further Evidence–Exhibit B at Galerie Lelong. In these dual shows, Schneemann depicts the female body as contested, controlled and imprisoned. And it couldn’t feel more timely.

For many of us feminists, the election of Donald Trump might just be the single worst event we’ve collectively experienced. This statement needs no litany of examples to back it up.

Of course, many people—myself included—have been glued to social media, religiously reading political commentary, the news, and critical theory to help process how royally fucked the world is. But honestly, the only thing that I have found to be remotely comforting is feminist punk.

Here’s my suggested playlist, paired with a stage of grieving correlated to each song.

What is it like for a woman artist to self-expose? A roundtable at New York University’s Performance Studies Department last week gave some insider insight into the bravery and vulnerability that explicit feminist performance art requires.

Moderated by Performance Studies Professor Barbara Browning, Baring It: Self-Exposure In Feminist Performance brought together two performance artists of different generations–outspoken stalwart Karen Finley and mannequin-masked Narcissister. The panel was organized in conjunction with the Grey Art Gallery’s exhibition A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s-1980s. No stranger to public nudity herself, Moorman acted as a historical foremother for the two performers as they delved into their own use of the body.

Resurrecting the forgotten careers of women artists can make for bittersweet exhibitions. On one hand, it’s exciting when a visionary woman finally gets the attention she deserves. On the other hand, the institutionalized sexism that erased her creative input is thoroughly enraging.

Nowhere is this felt more intensely than in A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde 1960s-1980s, currently at the Grey Art Gallery. Organized by a curatorial team largely connected to Northwestern University (the show first premiered at their Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art), the expansive exhibition firmly establishes Charlotte Moorman as a performance art force alongside seminal Fluxus artists like Nam June Paik, John Cage and Yoko Ono. In a response to art historical misogyny, the show essentially returns her artistic agency 25 years after her death in 1991.